


riding in on a pale white horse

by 7thchoir



Category: You (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Introspection, Moral Ambiguity, One-Sided Attraction, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 04:12:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19191622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7thchoir/pseuds/7thchoir
Summary: Guinevere Beck is twenty-five years old when she must ask herself the question that all women must ask eventually:How do I survive this?





	riding in on a pale white horse

**Author's Note:**

> this was in my drive for months, and it was originally supposed to be much, much longer. i cut it down by a metric ton, and this is the result.
> 
> anyway. beck deserved better. the ending for this is open-ended, but i wanted more of a fighting chance for our resident almost-heroine.
> 
> title is from [consideration by rihanna](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yWGK5wHTrI)

There’s a Greek tale she remembers; the name escapes her for just a moment, but it’s alright, she guesses. It’ll come to her. She’s had a lot of time to think, alone in her cage, as she bites at her nails to hold against the tide of boredom.

The tale goes like this: A scared girl takes the advice of her sisters and approaches her lover, in the night, knife in hand. She is afraid because she does not know whether or not he is a lie. She does not know, if she lights the candle and peers down at his sleeping face, if she will find something that will scare her into blowing the light out. A good girl, obedient girl. Pretending, maybe, that she never knew the truth at all.

Her lover had been a god, and her sisters had been wrong. She forces out a bitter facsimile of a laugh. She wishes she could be so lucky.

The clock ticks on in her cage— it’s sometime close to the last dredges of the afternoon. He’d placed it there to help ground her or something. It’s off by a few hours now, running on a fading battery. A mistake on his part, maybe, but she’s now long understood that Joe makes fewer mistakes than she thinks. Her heart sinks at the thought, but she digs her nails into the soft flesh of her stomach until the pain brings a sudden, sharp clarity.

Guinevere Beck is twenty-five years old when she must ask herself the question that all women must ask eventually: _How do I survive this?_

Trying to escape right now, much to her misfortune, is out of the _fucking_ question. Her anxiety spikes at the thought of it— Joe is intelligent and charming, but most of all, he’s lucky. She wouldn’t stand a chance, even if she took apart the typewriter and gutted him with whatever sharp edge she could find. She might as well stab herself at that point— better chances that he’d take her to the hospital, where she could make her run.

Or, he could let her bleed out. Mop up her blood with the dingy mop head that hasn’t been changed in weeks, until the cleaning fluid in the bucket goes rust-red. The oxidation of blood would probably be bad for the books, and she takes some morbid joy in thinking that she could damage them in her dying gasps.

The blatant truth is this: Joe loves her— wait. Joe _enjoys_ her. The likelihood of him wanting her dead are slim, but not slim enough. It hurts her, still. There’s a dying part of her that loved him. It’s funny how that part of her was thriving only days ago. Sunshine must have been pouring out of her ass in torrents. Now she’s in a glass book cage, marinating in the stench of day old wontons and her own piss.

She looks around her, in the dark, cheek pressed to the cold glass. In order to live, she thinks, the chances of her dying must logically be null. Zero. It’s not so simple when the person brandishing the ax has used it before.

Joe gave her one condition: love. The word almost brings a snarl to the air (how, how, _how_ could she love someone like this?) but she smothers it. He wants her to be doting, wants her to have sex whenever he wants, bare her words, her privacy, her mind, her _heart_ to him and have it aligned to what he thinks she is.

And what is she? Perfect girlfriend, a little bit dumb but just enough for it to be acceptable. Sexy, all the time, without trying. Predictable and loyal, but stubborn. Flawless yet somehow full of flaws, but only the flaws that he can fix.

The door to the basement opens with a jangle of keys— one pair in a set of two. Two keys to the cage, too, she assumes. She was stupid enough to get herself into this situation, but she's learned, at least, that the worst situation is definitely the most  _fucking_ likely.

“Hey there,” says Joe, voice soft and gentle as he approaches the cage. Cast in a soft glow from the harsh white lights above her, it’s not difficult to remember when  his kindness was familiar.

Her heart is a heavy tick in her chest, against her ribs— everythingship _,_ they’d said. He knows her, but he forgets; she knows him.

Be a good girl. Ignorant. Attractive. Troubled. Honest, but only when it was good for him.

He’s played a long, long game with her— she couldn’t realize how it had changed her, until now. There’s a voice in there, in her head, that’s whispering: _You know how to play him. You know how to be this person he wants. And he thinks this is who you really are._

She’s always been a liar, anyway.

Her restless mind stills. Not peaceful, not yet; not until either Joe is dead in the dirt, or she is. _I am not,_ she thinks with a distant certainty, _going to be the one to die down here._

 

The girl approaches her lover in the night, knife in hand, and smiles. She says, after a long moment of quiet: “Hey there, yourself. I missed you.”

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi at [my tumblr](http://sejci.tumblr.com)
> 
> also, the greek myth is eros and psyche.


End file.
